Watch: Two German Fighter Jets Intercept and Escort a London Bound Airliner

A pair of German Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets were scrambled last Thursday to intercept London bound Jet Airways flight 9W 118 that had lost radio contact. The Boeing 777-300 was traveling from Mumbai to London Heathrow with over 300 passengers on board when it lost radio contact with controllers over the city of Cologne, Germany.

The plane continued along its planned flight path and the fighter pilots managed to restore radio contact just north of Nuremberg using emergency channels.

As a precaution, the two Typhoons continued to escort the plane until it made a safe landing at London Heathrow. Two men filming from the British Airways plane behind can be heard saying, ‘There they are’, when they spot the planes – Daily Mail

It is not unusual for an aircraft to lose radio communication with controllers and it is reasonable to suspect the pilot entered a wrong frequency when being transferred from one controller to another. However, normal procedure is to return to the last frequency you were transmitting on and tell the controller you were unable to make contact with the new controller. Radio failure is also a possibility but modern airliners have backup radios in case of a radio malfunctioning.